


May Your Days Be Merry And Bright

by serendipityinwords



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 14:04:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8847886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityinwords/pseuds/serendipityinwords
Summary: It's hard enough to hide her feelings for her roommate from him, she doesn't need Christmas to complicate things even more.Or Bellamy has a thing for Christmas and Clarke has a thing for Bellamy having a thing for Christmas.





	

To be clear, Clarke agreed to become Bellamy’s roommate before she started having feelings for him.

It’s not like she had no idea that he was attractive before they moved in together. They had mutual friends in Raven and Miller and were already acquaintances who happened to argue way too much. And then her lease ended and she needed a place to stay.

Bellamy’s apartment was small. Nice. Honestly, it felt more like an actual home than she’s known in a while. And, Bellamy needed someone with whom he could split the rent. And then, it just became a matter of basic math.

But she wasn’t attracted to him yet. Well, that’s a lie. She’s always known he was attractive. Now she knows he’s a dork and finds him even _more_ attractive. It’s problematic, but she can live with it. She’s a med student, okay. She’s done worse.

And, yeah, at this point, he’s probably more of a best friend than just a roommate. She’s been through a lot with him. He was there for her when Lexa broke her heart and she was there for him when Octavia decided to move across the country without telling him first. He’s always been this steady thing she could always count on. She feels something with him. When they’re sitting next to each other on the couch, watching infomercials to kill time. Or, when they’re on either sides of the wall separating their rooms, Bellamy grading papers and muttering curses under his breath and Clarke on the verge of falling asleep because she has weird fucking shifts. She feels something for him all the same. She just hadn’t realized when that something turned into this ever-present fondness and then, into something a little more.

Yeah, so she’s a _little_ more than attracted to Bellamy. She can handle it. She’s been handling for a while now.

And then Christmas comes around and she’s so fucked.

It’s just. Bellamy’s weirdly into Christmas. And Clarke’s weirdly into Bellamy being weirdly into Christmas. She knew she’d have to deal with her feelings sometime. She just doesn’t expect it to be _Christmas_. And, to be fair, she doesn’t exactly get a warning.

She wakes up one cold December morning, and the first thing she sees is a fucking Christmas tree in their living room. Logically, she knows it couldn’t have sprouted up from the ground on its own. But her sleep-addled mind still needs a moment to cope with this development before she can even begin to think about what to do. She stares at it for close to minute before she realizes that Bellamy must have done this. She thinks back to anything Bellamy might have said that eluded to the possibility of him buying a fucking Christmas tree, but she just comes up more confused than ever.

It’s also decorated. Badly. The ornaments are horribly mismatched and unevenly distributed and the tree looks like it’s about to tip over, but. It's been decorated. If the fact that Bellamy lives with Clarke, and thus, is the only person who had access to their living room wasn’t enough to convince Clarke that he did this, the sheer ugliness of the tree would have given it away. She loves him, but his crafts skills are dismal, _at best._

Later, she finds him on the couch, some history documentary already on. At least _some_ things still make sense. Clarke plops down next to him, grabs the remote, and pauses the documentary.

He barely looks up. “Mornin’,” Bellamy greets her. She doesn’t even get distracted by the rasp in his voice this time. Mostly.

She ploughs through, wasting no time on preamble. “Is that,” she points at the tree and pauses, not really knowing how to continue, “real?”

He looks at her like she just asked the dumbest question in the world. “Yeah.”

Her mouth opens and shuts uselessly for a few seconds and then, “Why?” she finally settles on.

He shrugs. “Why not?”

“Well, for starters, it causes a mess and then it dies.”

He scrutinizes her for a long second. “I should have known you would be a Christmas sceptic.”

She scoffs. “And I should have known you would be a dork about it.”

Bellamy laughs. It’s a light sound. Somewhere, at the back of her head, she feels like it’s too much for so early. Mostly, she just likes hearing him laugh. “I like Christmas, Clarke,” he tells her.

“I never said you shouldn’t,” she mumbles.

“Well your face is.” He reaches over and smoothens down the space between her eyebrows with his thumb. She barely stifles a gasp. “You’re doing the frowny thing.”

“Am not,” she insists petulantly.

“You’re doing it right now.”

She rolls her eyes and swats his hand away, albeit, reluctantly. “Yeah, well.”

He looks at her, easy smile going a bit stiff. “If you don’t want it, we can take it down.”

“No,” she says quickly. He’s always so ready to give up the things that make him happy, it kind of hurts her heart. “You pay half the rent, don’t you? It’s your house too.”

“Yeah?” She sees the beginning of a smile. One of his real ones. The kind that, if she’s feeling fanciful, she’d say he reserves for her alone. And she feels really fanciful today.

Might be something to this Christmas shit after all.

“Yeah,” she tells him easily, “If it makes you happy, we keep it.”

And, then he smiles. When he smiles like that sometimes, her chest feels like it’s about four sizes too small.  She’d let him bring in a hundred stupid plants if it would make him smile like this.

He picks up a mug, half-filled with the yesterday’s coffee and gets up to leave. The smile still doesn’t quite exit his face. “I’m remembering you said that on our next trip to IKEA.”

Laughter spills out of her, easy. Everything feels easy around him. She kind of feels like she’s made of light. “No!” she yells after him jokingly, “I said that in an emotionally heavy moment! I take it back!”

But he’s already gone into the kitchen, his chuckles echoing through the hallway. She grins to herself. _Days like these_ , Clarke thinks, she feels like she and Bellamy are just a little more than best friends. Just a little more.

He comes back with a mug of freshly made coffee for Clarke and eggnog for himself.

She raises an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Shut up,” he says without heat, grinning into his mug.

They unpause the documentary after only a small amount of Clarke’s half-hearted protests, and they watch it together.

Just a little more.

It starts with the small things. Fake snow sprayed on the windows, ornaments for the tree, stockings hanging above the shoe rack, tinsel _everywhere_. And then he’s just strutting around in obnoxious Christmas sweater and it gets kind of ridiculous. The thing is, Clarke expects this to quell her attraction toward him, not do the exact opposite.

It’s awful, and frankly, she’s worried about herself. The other day she’d seen him in a green Christmas sweater with a bright red Rudolph nose sticking right out, and she had to splash her face in cold water just to get a grip of herself.

Plus, there’s this thing about gifts. Bellamy hadn’t actually said it but she knows that presents are a big deal. You know, considering how into the holiday he is. Also, she doesn’t know if it comes with the territory of being the mom friend, but Bellamy is the best gift-giver she knows.

He’d gotten Miller and Bryan a puppy as an engagement present. Of course, it confused her and all their friends because Miller hates most animals and they were all sure he’d hate the present too. But they all understood when Bryan’s face lit up at the sight of the dog and Miller’s softened like nothing she’d ever seen before. At that moment, she felt like she was intruding on something private. Bellamy had done that. He seems to know what someone wants before they do. Maybe if he could throw her bone too, she would be less confused about her feelings for Bellamy.

So, anyway, now she just has to get the perfect gift for Bellamy, the guy she might be in love with, who is also coincidentally the best gift-giver of all time. No pressure or anything.

It’s the morning a few days before Christmas when Clarke finds Bellamy sitting on the kitchen counter, gripping his mug so tight, his knuckles go white. She doesn't need to see the contents of it to know that it's eggnog. Fucking dork. She goes to sit next to him, without thought. It’s like her stupid body’s on autopilot. Wherever he is, she’s never that far. Plus, he’s so warm, she can’t resist tucking herself into him.

“Hey,” she murmurs.

He grins down at her, rubbing his hands up and down her arm as she sighs contentedly. She could stay like this forever, she thinks. “Good morning,” Bellamy chirps. “Eggnog?”

Clarke barely manages to stifle a groan. She hates all non-Bellamy morning people, she decides. She blearily opens her eyes to see Bellamy handing her a mug that says _“Have yourself a merry little Christmas”_. She’s convinced he’s fucking with her at this point.

“We don’t drink any other liquid in this house, anyway.”

Bellamy snorts. “You don’t want it?” He says withdrawing the mug.

“I didn’t say that,” Clarke admonishes snatching it away from him.

She takes a sip and sighs again. She has to admit, that’s some good fucking eggnog.

“Eggnog is the only good thing about Christmas.”

Bellamy shakes his head, amused, and hums.

She glances up at him. “What about you?”

“What _about_ me?”

“What do _you_ like about Christmas?”

Bellamy stretches and yawns. She averts her eyes when his shirt rides up. “A lot of things,” he says cryptically.

She rolls her eyes at that. “Why Christmas then?”

Bellamy looks up, startled. She’s secretly smug that she’s caught him off guard. “What?”

“Well, you weren’t this excited about Easter or thanksgiving or Halloween. It’s clearly an exclusive obsession,” she explains, “And, I asked Miller because he’s known you the longest, and he said—and I quote— ‘The dude goes super hard for Christmas, it’s weird.’”

He smirks. “You’ve been doing your research, Clarke?”

She scoffs, willing herself not to flush. It works. Mostly. “You’re deflecting.”

He considers her for a few seconds, sets down his mug, and turns himself around so he’s facing her. Clarke sets her mug down, too, a little concerned.

“So, you know about my lousy childhood?”

She raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, and you know about my lousy adolescence.”

“I had a lousy adolescence, too,” he reasons.

“Yeah, you win.”

He grins, and she kind of wants to kiss it off him. But she just grins back. 

“Anyway, Christmas was the only time of year our mom actually gave a shit about us,” Bellamy says, “I think she just convinced herself that if she could give us a good time that one part of the year, she could feel less guilty about the rest of it.”

“And how did that work out?” she probes gently.

“Not surprisingly, it didn’t. Not really.”

“But you still love Christmas?”

He sighs. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because, she was still my mom. And I don’t know if I can ever forgive her, but I cared for her.” He’s quiet for a few seconds. “And, after she passed away, I kind of took over from her. I took care of Octavia, and money was tight, but I still managed to make the Christmases good.”

“And now that she’s gone, you don’t know how to stop,” She finishes for him.

He shrugs, like, _what are you going to do?_

Clarke thinks about all of this for a second. She’s known about his life, vaguely. She’s known that his mother had been neglectful for most of his life, before getting killed in a hit-and-run. She knows that they were passed on to his uncle’s, but Bellamy still had to work for most of the things he and Octavia had. That their lives were hard, but Bellamy tried with everything he had to make it more than just that. He revealed all of this stuff slowly. She finds that he’s guarded, the way she is. Their hearts are both broken, jagged pieces that don’t seem to fit that well anymore and they always seem to flinch easier than most. They’re a mess of tragedy and love and fear and so much more. And it’s only because she understands how hard it is to let people see _you_ , does she appreciate the fact that he does love her. One way or the other.

What she’s learned about him only confirms what she’s already known. That he’s brave beyond reason. That he’s a better man than she’s ever known. That he deserves the whole world and nothing less. But he’ll never believe her. And she doesn’t know how to explain something so bizarrely simple. So, she deals with it the only way she knows how.

“Your sister’s a dick,” Clarke tells him, picking up her mug again and slurping at it noisily. She knows she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t if he were anyone else.  But she feels he should know, though, she suspects he already does.

He looks surprised, if nothing else. “Well, so is Lexa,” he retorts, clearly defensive.

She rolls her eyes at him again. “You act like those things cancel each other out.”

He snorts at that, shaking his head at her. He looks impossibly fond of her in that moment, despite everything. She pretends that jolt of happiness she feels doesn’t mean anything. She’s getting pretty bad at that.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Whatever,” she echoes, shuffling in closer. He picks up his own mug and leans into her, so whatever. They’re even.

They stay like that for a while. The silence is companiable and nice. The contact they share feels even more special than usual. It’s the kind of moment she knows is a rare one, even as it’s unfolding. It’s the kind she thinks she will recall randomly when she’s sad. If she could pick a moment to live in forever, this would be a front-runner. She feels like she’s almost invincible. Maybe, that’s why she asks what she does.

“Does it still make you happy?” She asks him, “For reasons not relating to your sister, I mean?”

 He stares into the contents of his mug, expression unreadable. “Yeah,” he mutters almost to himself, “There are other things.”

She nods and extends her mug towards him. “Then I’d like a refill, please.”

He doesn’t say anything while he pours the eggnog. But he doesn’t hide his smile either. And that means something.

The moment still hasn’t ended.

She hangs the mistletoe over the kitchen door the next day on a whim. One of those rare things she does before her rational side can point out a million reasons why she shouldn't have. It’s not that Clarke has been consciously plotting for a way to kiss him, but it’s crossed her mind. And it’s innocent enough. She means, yeah, they’re the only two people in the house, and yeah, that means if anyone kisses under the mistletoe it’s going to be Bellamy and Clarke, but. He doesn’t have to kiss her, and even if he chooses to, the kiss doesn’t have to mean anything. But if she’s being honest with herself, of course it’ll mean something. At least to her.

She regrets the mistletoe almost immediately.

But Clarke is nothing if not stubborn. And it would be weirder to take it down for no reason. The mistletoe is staying up there. Bellamy doesn’t even seem to notice it. She’s just over-reacting.

It’s thematic, if nothing else.

In retrospect, it’s her own fault. She had rushed out of her room to tell Bellamy about the gift she’d just secured for him via the internet (she recognizes that she should have kept it a secret but there really wasn’t anyone else she’d rather talk to about it) when she bumps into him right as he’s leaving the kitchen. Their eyes immediately snap up to the mistletoe hanging directly above them.

She should have taken it down. _Why does she never trust her gut?_

He freezes like a deer in headlights, his eyes widening comically large. “We don’t have to.” She would laugh if she weren’t so fucking mortified.

But, then, she sees his eyes drop to her lips for way longer than necessary. Her heart starts to race and her palms start to get clammy. It’s now or never, she realizes.

Clarke clenches her sweaty palms and swallows hard. She drags her own eyes level with his so that he can adequately see her roll her eyes. “Can you give me one reason to enjoy this stupid holiday.” Amazingly, her voice remains steady.

Even more amazingly, he grins at her. Easy. This time she has no doubt. This smile is just for her.

Her first coherent thought when he leans in and kisses her is that she doesn’t believe in Christmas miracles, but this is something close. Her second, is to kiss him back. And she does. He tastes kind of like warm rum and peppermint. His hands cradle her face and she tangles one of her own in the curls of his hair. He radiates warmth and she finds herself moving in closer and closer to it. Him. She off-handedly wonders what it would be like to kiss him when it isn’t Christmas.

She could totally find out.

When he pulls away, her lips are still tingly. She gets on her tiptoes so she can rest her forehead against his. His eyes are still shut and hers are barely open.

“Hey,” she whispers.

His smile is soft and fond, and she finds herself touching the edge of it with her fingertips.

“Hey.”

“I love you,” Clarke says.

It should feel like a big thing, admitting it out loud. But, she just feels at peace. Like she can breathe easier now. The thing is, she’s loved him for a while now. And in that moment, she realizes she wants nothing more than for him to know.

His eyes stay shut, but his smile widens, impossibly. “I love you, too.”

She laughs a little. Half out of relief and half out of delirious joy. She presses a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth.

“Good. Because I ordered a super expensive copy of the odyssey and it’s coming in a few weeks. Not that I’d be upset giving you the gift if you didn’t love me that way. It’s just—”

He kisses her properly, effectively cutting her off. Eventually, though, they have to stop because they’re both smiling too much.

He places both his hands at either sides of her hips and she clutches his shoulders. He sways a little and she follows. There isn’t any music playing but, she’s almost certain they’re dancing.

“So, what I’m hearing is I’m not getting my gift until next year?” he asks her. She can’t see his expression anymore because his chin is resting on the top on her head but she gets the feeling that he isn’t exactly upset about it.

“Looks that way.”

“That set of expensive paintbrushes under that tree is early then?”

She places a kiss at the hollow of his neck. “Revealing gifts to the recipient before they open it is not very Christmasy of you.”

She feels him laugh more than she hears it. “You’re rubbing off on me.”

“And I have an eggnog addiction. So, we’re both losing.”

“I don’t know,” he tells her,” It seems like a win from where I’m standing.”

So maybe Christmas isn’t that bad.


End file.
